NixOS on Dell XPS 13

Available combinations are:

• Wayland + sway on XPS 13 9310 (my current active setup)
• Xorg + i3 on XPS 13 9310
• Wayland + sway on XPS 13 9370
• Xorg + i3 on XPS 13 9370

9370 configuration is not supported anymore as I don't own this device. The branches preserved only for historical purpose. 9310/sway is my daily driver (Xorg is no longer supported and left for potential fallback in case of urgent need or annoying behavior, that I'm now thinking about will not likely be the case)

Installation

1. Boot from NixOS live USB preferably

parted /dev/nvme0n1 -- mklabel gpt
parted /dev/nvme0n1 -- mkpart ESP fat32 1MiB 512MiB
parted /dev/nvme0n1 -- set 1 boot on
parted /dev/nvme0n1 -- mkpart primary 512MiB 100%
cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/nvme0n1p2
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p2 luks
pvcreate /dev/mapper/luks
vgcreate xps /dev/mapper/luks
lvcreate -L 16G xps -n swap
lvcreate -l 100%FREE xps -n nixos
sudo mkfs.fat -F 32 -n boot /dev/nvme0n1p1
sudo mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/xps/nixos
sudo mkswap -L swap /dev/xps/swap
mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount /dev/disk/by-label/boot /mnt/boot
swapon /dev/xps/swap

2. Get the configuration

git clone https://github.com/ymatsiuk/nixos-config /mnt/etc/nixos/

3. Edit /mnt/etc/nixos/users.nix to adjust user. Use the following command for password hash nix-shell -p mkpasswd --run "mkpasswd -m sha-512"
4. Edit file systems config and luks device

nixos-generate-config --root /mnt --show-hardware-config
lsblk -f

5. Enable flakes
6. Install NixOS

nixos-install --flake path:.#nixps

Details

What's inside:

1. NixOS:

   • latest stable kernel from nixpkgs-small
   • stable nix
   • modules:
     • podman
     • docker (buildkit enabled)
     • fonts (Iosevka, Source Sans Pro, Source Serif Pro)
     • greetd (tuigreet)
     • pipewire
     • xdg-portal (screen sharing)
     • zsh

2. Home-Manager:

   • alacritty (gruvbox theme)
   • firefox with Wayland support
   • foot main terminal (gruvbox theme)
   • gammastep
   • git (rbw credentials helper)
   • gtk (gruvbox theme)
   • i3status-rust (gruvbox theme)
   • kanshi (switches to external output once connected)
   • mako (gruvbox theme)
   • neovim (gruvbox theme + lsp)
   • starship (as shell prompt)
   • sway (gruvbox theme)
   • rbw
   • fuzzel application launcher for Wayland
   • wezterm (gruvbox theme)

Upcoming refactoring

Current directory and flake structure doesn't scale. I have to host my work configuration for mbp in a separate private repository - not ideal. The goal of refactoring is to modularize the configuration better to allow different architectures and centralize host management merging both repos. Proposed structure:

nixos/
├── flake.nix
├── flake.lock
├── hosts/
│   ├── nixps/
│   │   └── default.nix
│   ├── nixlab/
│   │   └── default.nix
│   ├── nixpi3/
│   │   └── default.nix
│   ├── nixpi4/
│   │   └── default.nix
│   └── mbp/
│       └── default.nix
├── modules/
│   ├── common/
│   │   ├── boot.nix
│   │   ├── dev-shells.nix
│   │   ├── networking.nix
│   │   ├── users.nix
│   │   └── packages.nix
│   ├── darwin/
│   │   ├── aerospace.nix
│   │   ├── homebrew.nix
│   │   ├── jankyborders.nix
│   │   └── defaults.nix
│   └── linux/
│       ├── apfs.nix
│       ├── greetd.nix
│       ├── home-assistant.nix
│       ├── obs.nix
│       ├── opengl.nix
│       ├── pipewire.nix
│       ├── tailscale.nix
│       ├── telegraf.nix
│       ├── upgrade-diff.nix
│       ├── zigbee2mqtt.nix
│       └── fonts.nix
└── home/
    ├── darwin/
    │   └── i3status-rust.nix
    ├── linux/
    │   ├── foot.nix
    │   ├── gammastep.nix
    │   ├── gtk.nix
    │   ├── i3status-rust.nix
    │   ├── kanshi.nix
    │   ├── mako.nix
    │   └── sway.nix
    ├── common/
    │   ├── alacritty.nix
    │   ├── firefox.nix
    │   ├── gammastep.nix
    │   ├── git.nix
    │   ├── gtk.nix
    │   ├── mcfly.nix
    │   ├── neovim.nix
    │   ├── rbw.nix
    │   ├── starship.nix
    │   ├── wezterm.nix
    │   └── zoxide.nix
    ├── nixps.nix
    ├── nixlab.nix
    ├── nixpi3.nix
    ├── nixpi4.nix
    └── mbp.nix

Notes:

• default.nix looks redundant, hosts/nixps.nix instead of hosts/nixps/default.nix
• home/ split into linux and darwin, maybe graphics|gui and terminal|cli (?)
• import modules/hm in flake.nix per host or chain imports flake.nix -> hosts/nixps/default.nix -> modules/common/boot.nix ...
• does modules/common make sense even